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✷ to be read on June 15th⎮ 9 Sivan ✷︎

Nasso (“Take A Census”), the longest portion in the Torah, opens by detailing the responsibilities of the Levites. In addition to articulating the laws surrounding the Nazirite and the priestly blessing, Nasso develops the concept of adultery as a specifically religious transgression on the part of a woman (sotah) and outlines the ritualistic procedure by which a woman's guilt or innocence is to be ascertained. This priestly ritual occurs when a man suspects his wife of infidelity (or has the feeling of jealousy). 

This short description entails a couple of things worth emphasizing: intuited infidelity is confirmed or disconfirmed via a trial-by-ordeal. This ordeal only applies to women. In this ritual, the woman drinks a concoction of water, a bit of dirt from under the Temple's marble floor, a bitter herb, and the rubbed-off dried ink of the text of the Torah's description of the sotah ritual. A guilty woman will suffer a terrible death; an innocent woman will be blessed with children if previously childless or healthy children if previously her children were ill. 

For those of you feeling puzzled, upset, or embarrassed by this piece of Torah take a moment to sit with Rabbi Lisa Grushcow's academic drash. Alternatively, Rabbi Avi Shafran addresses the oddity of this trial-by-ordeal in which no real danger appears to be present while speaking less directly to the issue of misogyny that would appear to many of us to be front and center.

*Originally printed in 2023 in the "LJCC Weekly Announcements May 22⎮2 Sivan"